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But if the presiding Spirit and the conditions of life are
chosen by the Soul in the overworld, how can anything be left to
our independent action here?
The answer is that very choice in the over-world is merely an
allegorical statement of the Soul's tendency and temperament, a
total character which it must express wherever it operates.
But if the tendency of the Soul is the master-force and, in the
Soul, the dominant is that phase which has been brought to the
fore by a previous history, then the body stands acquitted of any
bad influence upon it? The Soul's quality exists before any
bodily life; it has exactly what it chose to have; and, we read,
it never changes its chosen spirit; therefore neither the good
man nor the bad is the product of this life?
Is the solution, perhaps, that man is potentially both good and
bad but becomes the one or the other by force of act?
But what if a man temperamentally good happens to enter a
disordered body, or if a perfect body falls to a man naturally
vicious?
The answer is that the Soul, to whichever side it inclines, has
in some varying degree the power of working the forms of body
over to its own temper, since outlying and accidental
circumstances cannot overrule the entire decision of a Soul.
Where we read that, after the casting of lots, the sample lives
are exhibited with the casual circumstances attending them and
that the choice is made upon vision, in accordance with the
individual temperament, we are given to understand that the real
determination lies with the Souls, who adapt the allotted
conditions to their own particular quality.
The Timaeus indicates the relation of this guiding spirit to
ourselves: it is not entirely outside of ourselves; is not bound
up with our nature; is not the agent in our action; it belongs to
us as belonging to our Soul, but not in so far as we are
particular human beings living a life to which it is superior:
take the passage in this sense and it is consistent; understand
this Spirit otherwise and there is contradiction. And the
description of the Spirit, moreover, as "the power which
consummates the chosen life," is, also, in agreement with this
interpretation; for while its presidency saves us from falling
much deeper into evil, the only direct agent within us is some
thing neither above it nor equal to it but under it: Man cannot
cease to be characteristically Man.
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